From Bathroom Floods To Thanksgiving ER Tips

A sticky bathroom floor, a suspicious squish underfoot, and suddenly we’re playing detective with a leaky ice maker hiding behind the kitchen wall. That mini-crisis becomes a surprisingly useful reminder about catching small problems fast—spot the clues, shut the valve, call the help, and save the floorboards. From there we pivot to a sold-out sensation at Düsseldorf’s Kunstpalast: a “grumpy guide” who roasts museum visitors as a performance. He keeps it impersonal but sharp, proving that a little friction can make art feel alive. When the barrier between performer and crowd disappears, curiosity spikes, questions sharpen, and the room wakes up.

With the holidays approaching, we shift gears into practical mode with an ER doctor’s top five Thanksgiving injuries and how to avoid them. We break down the sneaky culprits—knife cuts, oven and fryer burns, backyard football mishaps, head injuries from falls, and stomach woes from overeating—and offer clear, simple ways to minimize the risk. Think focus over frenzy in the kitchen, practice new tools before the big day, respect heat and hot oil, stretch before you sprint, clear walkways for kids and older guests, and keep a small home kit ready: bandages, gauze, antibiotic ointment, and indigestion meds. Small steps, big payoff.

We close with food joy: a love letter to corn casserole and those sweet potato “dumplings” wrapped in crescent dough and bathed in cinnamon-sugar syrup—dangerously close to dessert and absolutely worth it. Along the way, you’ll get stories, safety tips, and a nudge to prepare without losing the fun. Subscribe for more smart, cozy chaos; share this episode with the family chef; and tell us: what’s your favorite Thanksgiving tradition or side? Your picks might make our next menu.

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Liberty Line each week on Sunday, look for topics on my X file @americanistblog and submit your 1-3 audio opinions to anamericanistblog@gmail.com and you'll be featured on the podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:29 Midweek Greeting & Day Setup
• 0:41 The Bathroom Floor Mystery
• 1:38 Diagnosing The Fridge Leak
• 2:34 Wrestling The Fridge & Quick Fix
• 3:06 Pivot To Today’s Light Stories
• 3:12 Grumpy Museum Guide Phenomenon
• 5:03 Why Meanness Works In Museums
• 5:30 ER Doctor’s Thanksgiving Top Risks
• 7:31 Burns, Fryers, And Kitchen Safety
• 8:20 Backyard Sports And Head Injuries
• 9:13 Stomach Woes And Home First Aid

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Well, hello and good morning. Happy Wednesday. We're halfway through the week. It's going by kind of fast. Um what do I have going on today? Well, I didn't get to work out yesterday. I had a conditioning workout that I was supposed to do. Didn't get to work out because we had a slight emergency. I was in the bathroom. We had a we have a hall bathroom and I was in there and and I kept stepping on something I thought did the cat come in here and puke or whatever? And it was like clear and I felt sticky. And I was what am I s what am I stepping on? Well, I went to go look and I was somehow pushing on the floorboards and there was water coming up from the floorboards. And I thought, oh boy, this is not good. And I told the gent, I said, This is not good. You are not gonna be happy. Get in here and look at this. And we'd push down on the floorboards of the seams and water would come up. Not a lot, but enough. And I thought, oh boy. And immediately he knew what it was. It was our refrigerator, because we had our bathroom, the hall bathroom sits behind the kitchen. You know, you have the bathroom, walk down the hallway a little bit, and then then the kitchen. So our refrigerator backs up to the bathroom wall, and our refrigerator was leaking. So we had to pull the refrigerator out, and you should have seen us trying to pull that out. The gent with his bad hip that he probably is gonna have to get replaced soon. And me, I I'm worthless. I'm not really worthless. I was trying to help. But the our the way the refrigerator's tucked in there, it was hard to it was hard to you know grasp it and pull it out. It was anyway, we got it out enough for me to squeeze back there and turn off the water. Or tr well, I tried to turn off the water, but that handle was so hard to turn, and so the gent we had to pull the refrigerator out more, and he had to get back there, and his bad hip trying to bend down there and turn that water off was horrible. But we did it. We actually called the repair man, he came out, and uh we just we just temporarily uh it was the ice maker water thing, so we just turned the water off. Mopped up all the water, whatever, you didn't need to hear all of that. We need to get on to why I don't know why I explained all that to you. I don't know why I tried to tell you that story. Um, let's see, we need to move on. What do I have? I have I only have two stories to talk about today. I didn't have enough time. I slept in a little late, so and I was having problems trying to find topics, but here we go. And these are light and easy. So the let's start with this guy for the New York Post. He gives these tour guides in an art museum, and he and he um treats the visitors like crap, and the visitors love it. Alright, there's an art to guiding museum tours, and this guide is one very haughty artist, a staffer at Dusendor Dusseldorf's Kunstpalast Art Museum. I'm sorry, I probably butchered that name, puts on a twice-monthly grumpy guide tour in which the surly instructor deliberately insults and belittles his guests to their bemusement. Apparently, they love it. Actually, the tour is only$8, which is pretty dang good. Joseph Langalink's highly unpleasant tours cost around$8, and they've reportedly sold out every session since they launched in May with bookings into 2026. It's a 70-minute long walking tour. Um, Langalick is not his real name, it's the alter ego of performance artist Carl Brandy. Wags his finger in guest faces, admonishes them for being on their phones or taking a seat, and mocks their ignorance while going through the museum. Now he says he doesn't pick on any individual, it's to the group, which probably makes it more fun. I never insult visitors directly based on their personality or their appearance, but I insult them as a group, and that probably does make it more fun. My contempt is directed at an in at an inferred ignorance that may not even exist, but I try to make them feel as ignorant as possible. This does sound fun. I mean I would probably sign up for this and go. Uh Brandy credited the attraction's popularity to the emotional ride of his off-putting presentation. Oh, we all know comedy or cabaret formats where the performer's bad mood or aggressive attitude is key to the show. It's just not something we're used to seeing in museums, he explained. And unlike in a comedy show, there's no barrier between the character and the audience here. That's true. That wouldn't make it fun. I think it would make it hilarious. The article goes on if you'd like to go over there and read that. I think that's really fun. I like it. Alright, next up, this ER doctor. He says he's an ER doctor. These are the top five injuries and illnesses we see on Thanksgiving. I bet you can guess what they are. I did immediately guess what they are. These are like no-duh things. Cuts and lacerations. Grandpa cutting up the turkey. We see a lot of lacerations, particularly on the hands and fingers. People cut themselves all the time on Thanksgiving because they're using new tools like shredders, mandolins, or especially sharp knives. Plus, cooks are often distracted because they're busy talking with family and friends. Maybe they've had a few glasses of alcohol. Yeah, probably. So I recommend staying focused on the task at hand, carefully reading the instructions of the new cooking devices and practicing them before the big day. The next one up, burns, of course. You know, Aunt Ida getting the pie out of the oven. We also see quite a few patients with burns on Thanksgiving. Burns are often found on the face, hands, forearms, and even feet due to dropped food and sauces. The infamous turkey fryer, yes, is a common cause of Thanksgiving Day burns. They get really, really hot and can overflow if they're not used correctly. Absolutely. You know, too, ladies, if you're wearing a heat-friendly wig, stay away from opening that oven door. That's all I have to say about that. Um let's see, moving on, orthopedic injuries. Oh, so this is probably like playing football outside. The next category is trauma to bones, joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Forget football on TV. The real action is the game in the backyard or the horse play in the living room. Unfortunately, families uh fun can lead to major pain. There are a few ways to prevent holiday sprains, fractures, and concussions. First, you should stretch before the family football game. Don't warm up with a bottle of wine. That's great. And the next one, head injuries. Okay. Uh head trauma from falls is also common around the holidays. And oh, probably putting up lights and stuff. It's important to consider your environment for family members who are greater risk of falls. Oh, and then the weather too, if people are icy or something. Yeah, I didn't think about that. If the ice. All right, so let's see. Stomach woes. Of course, you're gonna have stomach woes after all that eating. So there you go. Those are the top things. Supplies to stock to here we go. Supplies to stock up on. So this is a very helpful article. You need band-aids, gauze, antibiotic ointment, and indigestion medicine should easily be accessible, which we all probably already have in our cabinets anyway. Well, there you go. That's a way to stay out of the ER this holiday this Thanksgiving holiday. All right, we need to move on with the question of the day. All right, here is the question of the day. Since we're coming up on Thanksgiving, and since we just did an article on uh Thanksgiving, how about what is your most favorite Thanksgiving tradition in your family? If you don't like that question, then tell me what your favorite side dish is. Mine is new. My new side dish that I love that the gent makes is the corn casserole. Now we do my sister-in-law makes had made these um sweet potato dumplings. Oh, she just gets these uh sweet potato patties that are already made up from the refrigerator or freezer section, and then you roll out the you get a Pillsbury uh crescent roll can, you know, and you open those up, you roll those out, you put the patty in the middle, you roll it up, you bake it, but then you put it in like this mixture of sugar and uh these other things that make it like a cinnamon and sugar, something else, I forget what else. It's like a syrup that goes in. Oh, they're so good, but so sweet. And oh, they're like they're almost like a dessert instead of a side dish. But getting back to the corn casserole, that's my favorite. Okay, that's my favorite. Okay, we gotta go. Thanks for listening. Bye.